Chapter 13Aria woke and could not for the moment remember where she was.
Then, in the light seeping through the thin curtains that covered her window, she saw the outline of her bedroom at Queen’s Folly.
Even then she could not comprehend that she was at home.
Then gradually her eyes took in the threadbare silk on the walls, the unfaded patch where the picture had once hung, the cheap wooden furniture that replaced the walnut and rosewood with which the room had once been furnished and the plain unframed mirror that stood on the dressing table.
Yes, she was home and sleeping again with only the ghosts of the past glories to remind her how beautiful the house had once been.
“I am at home,” she said aloud, as she rubbed the sleep from her tired eyes.
It had been dawn before she slept.
